


Innocence Lost

by pairatime



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 00:06:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4645050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pairatime/pseuds/pairatime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank thinks and helps O’Keefe after they see the camp</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innocence Lost

**Author's Note:**

> 2dozenowies: writer's Choice Psychological trauma take two

I need more mouth paste, Frank thought as he looked at his tube; he’d used over half of it in the last hour. But he just couldn’t get the taste out of his mouth, the taste of ash, of decay, of death. He just couldn’t get it out of his mouth…or his mind.

Frank had been stuck in Normandy for almost a month with no real chance to get clean…yet he still felt cleaner than he did now. He’d been frozen, starved, and isolated at Bastogne, but he’d rather be there for the rest of his life than ever see that…that…place ever again. 

The bodies were…piles, just lumps; they didn’t even look human. They hadn’t even tried to bury them. They just left them and when Winters ordered that train open…   
Frank stopped that line of thought as he rinsed out his mouth. He still had that taste...  
The living were worse; they were little more than skin and bones. How could it be that some of them were still alive, let alone moving? Frank thought as he shoved his toothbrush back into his mouth. Everything they must have been through…when that man had saluted him…Normandy, Bastogne, the Island, Sobel…nothing, nothing had prepared him for this. He’d seen death before, many, many times, but not like this, not like this at all.

Frank spat out the paste and rinsed out his mouth again. In the sink the white of the paste blended into pinks and reds, his gums brushed raw now seeped blood. The taste’s still there, he thought as he looked at the mirror taking a deep breath. In the mirror he could still see O’Keefe sitting on the bed right where he’d left him, just staring out the window.  
When they were finally relieved from the camp, O’Keefe had just stood there staring at the camp. Frank had Normandy, Bastogne, Sobel, and Dike in his past to build up to this. O’Keefe had nothing. He’d been home less than a month ago…then come to see this.  
O’Keefe was innocent, didn’t know what it was like to see death everyday, to see friends hit…he still has his innocence…or at least he had been and to lose it in such a way…  
Frank couldn’t just leave him there, so he dragged him back to town. O’Keefe had just stared and followed him until Frank had told him to sit down. Now the man, was he a man, was just staring out the window, lost in his thoughts.

He’d acted the same way when his grandmother had died. After the funeral, he’d just stared at her picture on the wall until his mother had just held him. That was the last time he remembered crying. It seemed so long ago…so very long ago.  
Frank spat the last of the paste out of his mouth and wiped his face with a cloth before walking over to the bed and sitting beside O’Keefe. It was dark out now and the sky was full of stars, beautiful stars.

“It’ll be ok,” was all Frank could think of to say as he wrapped his arm around O’Keefe, causing the younger man to lean into Frank, his head resting on the older man’s shoulder. Then he told O’Keefe what his mother had told him, all those years ago, “Things will get better…No matter how bad things look, they will get better, Patty.”


End file.
